Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to web application frameworks. More specifically, embodiments of the invention provide techniques for incorporating functionality of a first web application into a second web application composed using a component-based application framework.
Description of the Related Art
Various solutions are used for displaying web pages communicated over the Internet. One solution is JavaServer Faces (JSF) technology, which is a server-side web application framework that simplifies the development of user interfaces (UIs). Generally, a JSF application receives a request from a web browser application executing on a client, and responds by generating and sending a web page back to the web browser. The JSF application generates the web page using a set of standard components (e.g., hyperlinks, buttons, forms, etc.). The JSF application may also include specialized libraries called RenderKits, which translate each JSF component into a mark-up language, such as the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Further, the JSF application performs any processing required by the web page (e.g., handling user interface events, formatting data for display, etc.). Thus, the use of JSF may simplify the process of constructing a web application.
JSF may be used together with AJAX (short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to implement web applications. AJAX is a combination of development techniques that serve to improve the performance of web user interfaces. In particular, AJAX increases the responsiveness and interactivity of web pages by transferring data to and from the web server asynchronously. Using this approach, entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to retrieve data from the web server.